Gizmodo and Digitaltrends are among those reporting that electronics retail website Newegg has been sued by South Korean Banks, who say that Newegg and the South Korean Hardware company Moneual conspired to defraud the banks of "hundreds of millions of dollars."
The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, claims that Newegg and computer wholesaler ASI Corp. made false orders for home-theater computers from Moneual. The banks claim that Moneual organized the scheme and used the fake orders to obtain funds from the four banks. Newegg and ASI allegedly received a cut of the money in exchange for their cooperation.
[...] The computers that Moneual ordered were allegedly priced at 300 times their actual retail value, which is why the banks believe Newegg and ASI were part of the scam.
"No such business would have [paid] such an inflated price, unless it intended to create the illusion of extensive, profitable, high-value commerce... for the purpose of defrauding lenders into supporting the transactions," the lawsuit alleges.
The four banks are demanding a jury trial and monetary damages. They say that $230 million is still owed from the faulty loans that Moneual obtained.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DECbot on Tuesday October 24 2017, @03:01AM (5 children)
I wonder if this is in any way related to the new owners of Newegg, Hangzhao Liaison Interactive Information Technology Co., Ltd. [techpowerup.com]. It would not surprise me if a successful geek outlet is sold as a shell corporation to a foreign company in order to conduct massive fraud scams.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @04:09AM (4 children)
So how is newegg since the takeover?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @05:02AM (1 child)
Shitty. Half their items are now shady Chinese third-party sellers and the UI is set up to make it hard to tell whether you are buying from Newegg or the third party Chinese seller. I stopped using them all together years ago. They are garbage and I have always been able to find a lower price at another online retailer or eBay for every item they sell. This is even true of the their shell shocker and other deals.
(Score: 1) by ncc74656 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:54AM
Last time I checked, there was a checkbox to restrict search results to items sold by Newegg. Just took a look to confirm...have a look at this:
https://alfter.us/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Screenshot_20171024_203401.jpg [alfter.us]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday October 24 2017, @07:58AM (1 child)
Their website has become one of the worst script laden messes of any I've used. So much so my last experience with them was probably my very last. I'm not surprised to find out it is new owners responsible.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 24 2017, @12:26PM
Agreed. Since about 3 or so years ago their site has become close to unusable. There were points where I gave up looking because it was pulling in scripts from dozens of sites.
My biggest gripe was their Amazon wanna be shift towards selling everything while letting in a deluge of 3rd party sellers. No newegg, I'm not buying a fucking blender or tires from you. Ever.